Posts tagged veronica falls

This is a new song from my old nemesis, Veronica Falls. Nemesis, you ask? Well yes, this band, as far as I am aware, used to be Sexy Kids, the poster child for the ‘holy shit you don’t want to Google that band name’ generation. Right up there with Young Girls. Veronica Falls is definitely not as snappy, but I am still glad they changed it.

So they’ve made themselves a little more family friendly, and the tunes are still good. It doesn’t, I have to confess, excite me very much though. There’s a charming retroism to it, sitting in that sort of zone where the tail end of C86 indie turned into Britpop, and that might be why I am not as enthusiastic as I might be.

I can’t and won’t criticise a band for being backward-facing of course, because that would be pure hypocrisy. My personal flavour of choice when it comes to modern retroism is obviously enough the bands who love early nineties US indie. But then, that is music I barely listened to at all at the time, so for me it is pretty much new and I am having as much fun going back to enjoy the originals as I am exploring the current offshoots. So I don’t know if it’s the case that I am just not that smitten by the hummability of Veronica Falls’ actual songs, or if my greater familiarity with the music from which they draw their inspiration means I am inevitably less thrilled by its revival.

Maybe retaining the ability to be excited by music you’ve kinda heard before is the most important aspect to maintaining a lively interest in new music as you get older. Revivalism tends to move in twenty year cycles, hence the 70s revival when I was at university in the 90s, the 80s revival throughout my twenties, and of course the current fascination with the early nineties today. Consequently, once we ourselves hit our early thirties, musical fashions are almost certainly going to start dallying with music we listened to in our early teens, and I guess a lot of people struggle to be all that bothered the second time around.

Growing up I wasn’t exposed to all that much good music beyond the old stuff in my parents’ music collections. Austria was a pretty isolated place back then in that respect, so I guess I have been insulated to a degree. But I moved to the UK in 1993, so from now on the stuff being rehashed by fresh-faced young bands is increasingly likely to be stuff which I know very, very well indeed, and I genuinely wonder how I will take it. Will I be able to retain my enthusiasm, or will I turn into one of those cantankerous old curmudgeons endlessly harping on about pop music all sounding the same these days.